


the rain won’t make any difference?

by Anonymous



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: M/M, breaking up, broken!nomin, getting over someone, way too much use of 'way too'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-11 11:40:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17446274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: jeno wakes up at 4 A.M. it's not a complicated premise.





	the rain won’t make any difference?

jeno wakes up at 4 a.m, sometimes, when donghyuck stays over, so he can watch him while he's asleep. he watches his chest, the mellowed out ascend and descend. he watches the tiny spasms between his brows. the span of his lean body as it stretches when the cold coming from the open window pours over. the goosebumps raised along his arms. the furrowed nose. he thinks, what a terrifying creature, he thinks, what have you done to me?

it's difficult to imagine that there was something before this.

×

there's a certain brand, that one, the one that makes him halt his shopping cart. stagnate like a damn fool in that supermarket's empty aisle. something in his head knows, scratch that, downright warns him that he's not supposed to do that.

remembrance, that is.

a bowl of cocoa puffs, with s'mores to top, one cup of way too strong, way too sweet, expresso. someone at the other side of the counter in his kitchen. some time ago, that was all he had for breakfast, and, you know, memories we associate with food find a way to associate with the heart.

(he would never get the years of his life that that expresso took off.)

he buys the healthy one, vanilla gluten-free flakes with craisins and oatmeal, and, yeah, fucking nasty. jeno goes over the notes in his phone again. tries to commit to memory the small list of: the styrofoam tray of cherry tomatoes, the expensive-but-worth-it pancake mix, soy sauce. he won't admit to the soy sauce.

but jeno, he doesn't look, he doesn't remember to look, at the robusta coffee grains. it's funny in an unfunny, private way.

×

he and donghyuck watched the rain thigh to thigh after they climbed over to the roof of the building. they had to muffle their giggles on the way there, but, every now and them, they looked in each others eyes and couldn't help but smile. backs against damp concrete while the sky fell on them. it was fucking sappy, downright corny, actually. so it's with a boy, (the boy), sweet as honey, saccharine, that jeno muses about what he wished from the rain, some time ago.

×

for that angel who cried and made that storm happen, jeno says thanks — for all of it, for that one unfulfilled wish.

×

jaemin was in his polisci class. he was proud to endorse a sad excuse for a hockey team, and people replacing him was the focus of half a dozen neuroses. he had contemplated jeno, then drawn a line in the ground. he told him about the ones who hurted him, so bad, he said, only to scatter afterwards. it's not a complicated premise.

and trying to save someone was never a story with a befitting ending. don't let someone convince you that, if you try hard enough, a mechanic for the broken hearted can come into existence.

but,

but they had breakfast together.

jaemin drank an overwhelmingly sweet expresso, held jeno's s'mores hostage between his teeth, held him against the counter. his eyes, and that's sappy, could only get prettier as he ate away the distance.

so, truth be told, it wasn't that hard. falling in love, the most unsuspecting, inconspicuous, uncomplicated thing. like learning how to ride a bike, like waking up in the morning and finding it there.

the waking up from it, jeno reckons, was where things got grim.

×

jeno wakes up at 4 a.m and meets donghyuck's eyes. already awake and watching him, the cheek that's atop his elbow mumbling his speech. "you could give a hawk a run for it's money. every damn night," he makes the trademarked _that's so weird_ face, with the moon-sized eyes and the poorly-dimmed smile. "c'mere, jeno-ya, tell me why."

he needs a moment to stretch, his forearms atop his eyelids so he won't have to say it while making eye contact with donghyuck.

"you're quiet when you're asleep," he answers. and smiles when donghyuck shoves him hard enough to almost knock him off the bed.

jeno drags his forearms down enough to peer at a boy (the boy) and serve his heart right on a silver platter. take it, it's yours, just please wash and return the tray when you're done with it.

"when you're at peace i'm at peace too. that's weird, right? that if you're safe that's enough to make me feel safe too?"

donghyuck's eyelids get heavier, and he gets that look on his face.

the one he gets when he's asleep. or laying his face in a friend's neck, hands wrapped around their waist. or when jeno foregoes his trademarked hazardous cooking and orders sushi. it's just— soft. relived. wide eyes and softly parted mouth.

saying those kind of things out loud used to be herculean. those were words drenched in insecurity, clumsy as soon as they got out of his mouth.

"come here," he says, lays his elbows flat against the pillow so he's face-to-face with jeno. "let me watch you too, some time, yeah? besides," he smiles. his fingertips climb the side of jeno's face. "you're way too high-maintenance, can't be left unsupervised."

×

there's no _him_ in poetry. sam smith's old songs don't follow his tune. you don't think about him. you think about that pablo neruda's poem, tu risa. you don't think about him when you listen to frank ocean, to the real sad shit, when you drive to the beach, when you eat _that_ brand.

do you even remember, jeno?

junto al mar en otoño, / tu risa debe alzar / su cascada de espuma.

that's a line that talks about him— talks about donghyuck.

all the myths, all the fairy tales, they're all about him. the romantic ballads, the way too sweet things, way too greasy ones. the artificial sweetened things, hidden behind rose-tinted lenses for the sake of nostalgia.

they don't even come close to that boy. the boy, with half a dozen siblings, the one that wants to make you smile.

rain falls, and winter wants to stop by, for a while, but you made a summer up from his mouth alone. and fuck the heat, very much, but it's kind of okay when you're very much alive next to his overheating body. think, about all the rom-coms you would sooner perish than give in to, think about the jaded kind of shame you get from...

feeling, and then, actually talking about it.

think, there was something about the lull of loving in quietness. but also, being able to love with your whole lungs, all the breath you can gather. yearn for that from all the way inside your ribs.

do you even remember, jeno?

×

jeno wakes up at 4 a.m, one time, and finds jaemin crying. the shoulders of his boy are a caged bird, in that moment, bones rattling under the soft, thin skin of his back. he tries to bring him back, wants to drag him by the arms away from this kind of panic, but he can't. jeno says, jaemin, come back to me.

mechanics for the broken hearted are not a thing, were never a thing. the things that followed shouldn't have been a surprise.

jeno wakes up at 4 a.m and finds jaemin smoking, draped over the open window, stilled hand holding his phone. he gets up and fits himself against his side, watches the screen go black, and he tries not to inhale too much smoke. he tries to look into jaemin's eyes.

they weren't like— like this, you know.

jeno wakes up at 4 a.m and jaemin isn't in bed, but he doesn't rises, there's no rush. it's a phase. it's stopping by. it's a storm. any time now na jaemin will walk through that door and wish him good morning, will have breakfast with him.

what they told you about the sun, the ascend and descend, every day? it's true. of course it's true.

jeno wakes up at 4 a.m during a thunderstorm. the world crumbles outside, all around him, and he watches the torrential rain with something akin to innocence taking place in his heart. jeno thinks about wishes made on falling stars. all he got is the pouring rain, but he still wishes to become a raindrop. they don't feel sadness, they don't feel like this.

×

months later, some time later, he's done with polisci, got all his credits for the semester. for the first time in what feels like a long while, he thinks about what's he gonna do from now. honestly, fuck polisci.

it's on the bus stop. under something just a notch higher than a spring drizzle, where each thing glisters with dew. he didn't think to bring an umbrella, like a fool, but that's okay. there's still, like, half an hour 'till his bus arrives.

a boy sits next to him on the bench, he's got a hoodie with SINNERS written in all-caps. he's wearing black head-to-toe in a day which started off as sunny, got a walkman, glaringly pink. obnoxiously pretentious, and he sees jeno staring, so he offers, "sadness or sorrow. helps me study."

jeno makes small talk, he says, "are your classes done for the day?"

the stranger pops his tongue when he says _nope_.

"fuck jung. i gave a whole speech about how this rain, actually, simbolizes zeus's will to let us off early. but somehow he didn't find it very compelling. we did, thanks to it, get a lunch break. so he's not first on my hit-list."

jeno doesn't tells the boy that zeus is, really, not in charge of rain. every self-respecting creative writing student has to read percy jackson, that much should be obvious.

"jung yunho from creative writing?" he asks. to pretend like he didn't jump from department to department. on freshman year, and only then, did he settle on performing arts. "he, from all people, should be more receptive to overly-elaborated bullshit."

"that's what i thought!" the stranger nods his head enthusiastically. "hey, what's your name?"

"jeno," he says.

"jeno, my boy, do i got a story for you," he starts.

it's a glorious story about an angel who cries and makes it rain, such was the sadness put into it's heart. about a literature teacher who's about to hold him behind, because. about him making this all up on the spot, so could run there. because he saw a boy way too pretty sitting by himself, and he thought, i have to get behind that. have to find out what's going on there.

he says, "i saw something interesting, namely you, and i couldn't not intrude."

when the story ends so does the rain. this boy talks a whole lot. and like every good story, or the petrichor is messing with jeno's head, he already feels better.

"so before you call 911 and i run away, and i can _sprint_ , because i'm way too cute for jail," the stranger concedes. "i'm donghyuck, and it's a pleasure officially meeting you."

way too dark eyes, dude, way too dark hair, an open secret hidden inside a smile. and he called jeno "something", what the actual fuck.

"you are a terrifying creature," jeno says. and donghyuck's pout is terrifying, too. "but you're right."

"can you be more specific?" he asks. "i've recently gotten into being right. all the time. it's a wonder how i kept humble."

it's not funny but jeno laughs, anyway, and he stares. head-to-toe, without letting donghyuck notice. he tries not too stare too hard at the sharp edges, or what he thinks are sharp edges.

"way too cute for jail," jeno says, eyes turning into crescents without his permission.

 

**Author's Note:**

> i'm not a native speaker ;A; but i love nohyuck in all the TWO whole languages i speak  
> also this is translated from another thing i wrote, bc translation is the... most interesting thing...  
> can someone PLEASE write nohyuck is this a drought  
> also lookin back it makes no sense that he has a polisci elective while hes in perfoming arts im sorry im still a junior


End file.
